The bones of a teenage girl were discovered near Alexandria, La., in 1980.
The decomposing body of a young woman with long auburn hair and three silver stud earrings was found near Tallulah, La., in 1994.
And the body of a third woman, who had been shot to death, was discovered Dec. 22, 1991, in West Calcasieu Parish, La.
When forensic anthropologist Mary Manhein learned that convicted murderer Robert Charles Browne, 53, claimed to have killed and dumped 17 bodies across Louisiana, these murder victims immediately came to mind, she said Tuesday.
“They fit the time range when he was allegedly committing these crimes,” said Manhein, who is the director of Forensic Anthropology and Computer Enhancement Services (FACES) at Louisiana State University. “I’m going to have to look into those.”
Browne claims he killed 48 people throughout the country and in South Korea between 1970 and 1995, when he was convicted of killing 13-year-old Heather Dawn Church in El Paso County. He is serving a life sentence for murdering Church and another life sentence for strangling 15-year-old Rocio Sperry of Colorado Springs.
Some members of a Colorado group called Families of Homicide Victims and Missing Persons Inc. wonder if their missing relatives were killed by Browne, said Howard Morton, spokesman for the group.
“They’re watching and they’re wondering,” Morton said. “We watch cautiously because our hopes have been raised before.”
Morton cautioned that detectives should not be so eager to solve old homicide cases that they are duped by Browne into believing he killed someone that he didn’t.
“We don’t know if he is a serial killer or a serial confessor,” Morton said. “What we want to see is the real killer taken off the street.”
Lt. Clif Northam of the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office said the office’s tip line has received 148 calls from around the country from family members of homicide victims and people who knew Browne. The department is prioritizing the tips for further investigation.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children asked Sheriff Terry Maketa for information about the homicides Browne claimed he committed.
“We probably will give them a copy of our timeline,” Northam said.
In Louisiana, the girl and two women that Manhein had recalled may not have been Browne’s victims, but others may be identified in a new database FACES is building, Manhein said.
FACES cataloged images of the three victims, re-created using their decomposing bodies and skulls as models, along with hundreds of other unidentified bodies found in Louisiana the past 20 years.
Two weeks ago the Louisiana Legislature passed a bill that will give FACES $500,000 a year to build a database of DNA and biological information of thousands of missing and unidentified persons in the state.
Staff writer Kirk Mitchell can be reached at 303-820-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com.
